SAVING THE POLAR BEAR

The great white polar bear is the youngest and largest of the world’s bear species — a mighty hunter and fierce defender of its young. But climate change is drowning and starving polar bears. If greenhouse gas-fueled climate change keeps melting their sea-ice habitat, an Arctic apocalypse will wipe them out in a century — and they’ll disappear from the United States by 2050.

The Center for Biological Diversity achieved Endangered Species Act protection for polar bears in 2008. But the Bush administration passed a rule robbing them of protections from their worst threats: global warming and oil and gas development. The Center is leading the charge to ensure polar bears get the true protections they need to survive.

Since 2005, the Center:
• wrote the scientific petition to protect the bear under the Endangered Species Act;
• filed suit twice with partners to compel a response to our petition, earning the bear federal protection in 2008;
• challenged a Bush-era rule that robs the species of protections from its main threats;
• went to court to defend the bear’s federal protections from those who would undo them;
• spurred the administration to propose protecting 128 million acres of polar bear habitat: the largest critical habitat proposal in Endangered Species Act history.

Center supporters are an essential part of our polar bear campaign. In 2009, we submitted 94,000 petitions signed by supporters telling the Obama administration to fully protect the bear. We’re still in court to defend the bear’s place on the endangered species list and revoke the Bush rule that compromises the protections it needs to escape extinction.

The Center knows we can save the polar bear because:
• We’ve saved more than 500 other plants and animals.
• We’ve protected more than 120 million acres of endangered species habitat.
• We achieve success in 93 percent of our lawsuits.
• We’re one of the most — if not the most — cost-effective endangered species organizations in the country.